Thinking Machines Inc has now filed its reorganisation plan with the federal bankruptcy court in Boston. The company has cut its workforce to about 200 people from 425 and told the Wall Street Journal that during the fourth quarter it received several orders for its massively parallel machines. Sales for all of 1994 were $40.1m, less than half the previous year’s, and its net loss for the year was $54m. It says it will continue to generate revenue from its computer line, and expects to expand its new business of selling and licensing software development tools for parallel computing. A number of its hardware developers were hired by Sun Microsystems Inc, and Danny Hillis, who developed the company’s computer line, has left to work on a book and i s currently an adjunct professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is also considering starting another company. Under the reorganisation plan, Thinking Machines expects sales this year to be about $40m, rising to $50m in 1996 and $74m in 1997, and it expects to be profitable each year. It will issue unsecured creditors a new class of preferred stock and over a four-year period will return a very substantial portion of the $30m to $35m owed to creditors if the plan is court-approved.
